Diagnosing the decline of major pharmaceutical research laboratories : a prescription for drug companies.

Despite dramatically increasing expenditures for in-house pharmaceutical research and development (R & D) at major drug companies, few internally discovered, breakthrough products are on the horizon.

In contrast, and for significantly less private funding, biotechnology companies are playing an ever more significant role in generating promising biomedical product candidates.

For a variety of factors, ranging from financial and management to scientific in nature, we suggest that the twentieth century has encompassed the rise and decline of major pharmaceutical discovery research laboratories.

Herein, we provide a concise background to the industry and its current predicament.

Having diagnosed some of the problems inherent to the existing organizations, we provide a prescription for change, which places pharmaceutical companies at the center of constellations of alliances with biotech ventures.

We posit that, for the same or even fewer dollars, pharmaceutical companies could significantly enhance existing research productivity, with less risk, and with potentially higher rewards.

Were this approach to be adopted broadly and successfully, the effect on patients, the healthcare industry, numerous major corporations, their employees and stockholders, and the economy in general, could be « just what the doctor ordered » !

These lessons and proposals may also have merit in other research-based industries.